Dykes to Watch Out For

Dykes to Watch Out For
Several characters in Dykes to Watch Out For. From left to right: Mo, Sydney, Ginger, and Samia.
Author(s)	Alison Bechdel
Website	dykestowatchoutfor.com
Current status / schedule	On hiatus
Launch date	1983
End date	2008
Genre(s)	Lesbian, Women, Adults, Politics

Dykes to Watch Out For (sometimes DTWOF) was a comic strip by Alison Bechdel. The strip, which ran from 1983 to 2008, was one of the earliest ongoing representations of lesbians in popular culture and has been called "as important to new generations of lesbians as landmark novels like Rita Mae Brown's Rubyfruit Jungle (1973) and Lisa Alther's Kinflicks (1976) were to an earlier one".

DTWOF chronicled the lives, loves, and politics of a fairly diverse group of characters (most of them lesbians) living in a medium-sized city in the United States, featuring both humorous soap opera storylines and biting topical commentary. The strip was carried in Funny Times and a number of gay and lesbian newspapers, and also posted on the web.

According to Bechdel, her strip was "half op-ed column and half endless, serialized Victorian novel". Characters reacted to contemporary events, including going to the Michigan Womyn's Festival, Gay Pride parades and protest marches, and having heated discussions about day-to-day events, political issues and the way lesbian culture was changing. The strip was one of the most successful and longest-running queer comic strips. It introduced the Bechdel test, a set of criteria for determining gender bias in works of entertainment, that has since found broad application.

On May 10, 2008, Bechdel announced that she was putting the strip on indefinite hiatus in order to complete her graphic novel memoir Love Life, which was eventually published in 2012 as Are You My Mother?.